April 08, 2019

Parents of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a shooter killed 17 people in 2018, push petitions for 2020 ban on assault weapons in Florida. MIAMI HERALD

The effort by Republicans to complicate the citizen-initiative ballot process marches on.

A joint resolution that would up the number of votes required to approve a constitutional amendment passed its second committee meeting Monday, raising the threshold from 60 percent to 66 and two-thirds percent.

Citizens will first have to vote on the amendment, which would then be approved by a three-fifths vote in both chambers of the Legislature.

Bill sponsor Rep. Rick Roth, a Loxahatchee Republican, said the bill is a “broad base approach” to protect the state’s constitution.

“The constitution is the document that defends the least able to defend themselves,” he said, “Not the wealthy or the lawyers who have millions of dollars to have a medical marijuana bill.”

If adopted, the resolution would take effect in 2021. The Senate version of the bill, put forward by Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has cleared its first two committee stops.

The bills are not the first to make it more difficult to get constitutional amendments before voters this year, particularly before a crucial presidential election in which other groups hope to get before voters amendments banning assault weapons, requiring Medicaid expansion and raising Florida's minimum wage.

Another pair of bills put forward by Republicans would require, among other things, that ballot initiatives pay petitioners by wage or hour, not by signatures gathered; include the name of the initiative's sponsor on the ballot; disclose the percent of money raised by sources in-state and allow for interested parties to weigh in, and file a 50-word “position statement” either for or against the proposal to be posted on the Department of State’s website.

Lawmakers have steadily made it more difficult to amend Florida’s constitution in the past, limiting the amount of time a group has to collect signatures and raising the threshold for an amendment’s passage to its current 60 percent.

Without much power in Tallahassee over the last 20 years, progressive groups have been most successful pushing policies passed by voters who approved amendments.

Rep. Margaret Good, a Sarasota Democrat, said voters who care about topics like the environment, medical marijuana and Medicaid expansion turn to the ballot process to make change.

“Citizens have a real and effective voice in our government when it is clear that our legislature is not adequately addressing issues that are important to our citizens,” Good said. “This is, right now, the only answer that citizens have to this very, very broken process. Raising the bar is quashing the voice of the voters and the citizens of this state.”

The signature-focused bills would affect two major amendments that could appear on the 2020 ballot, one raising the minimum wage and the other allowing “energy choice,” advocates for those ideas say.

Alex Patton, chairman of a committee trying to get an energy-choice amendment initiative on the ballot, said that the bill makes it “obvious: that “the powers that be do not like citizens speaking up them.”

“In almost all cases, it’s impossible to get two-thirds of the state of Florida to agree on anything,” Patton said. “It’s going to kill ballot initiatives.”

Parents of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a shooter killed 17 people in 2018, push petitions for 2020 ban on assault weapons in Florida. MIAMI HERALD

The effort by Republicans to complicate the citizen-initiative ballot process marches on.

A joint resolution that would up the number of votes required to approve a constitutional amendment passed its second committee meeting Monday, raising the threshold from 60 percent to 66 and two-thirds percent.

Citizens will first have to vote on the amendment, which would then be approved by a three-fifths vote in both chambers of the Legislature.

Bill sponsor Rep. Rick Roth, a Loxahatchee Republican, said the bill is a “broad base approach” to protect the state’s constitution.

“The constitution is the document that defends the least able to defend themselves,” he said, “Not the wealthy or the lawyers who have millions of dollars to have a medical marijuana bill.”

If adopted, the resolution would take effect in 2021. The Senate version of the bill, put forward by Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has cleared its first two committee stops.

The bills are not the first to make it more difficult to get constitutional amendments before voters this year, particularly before a crucial presidential election in which other groups hope to get before voters amendments banning assault weapons, requiring Medicaid expansion and raising Florida's minimum wage.

Another pair of bills put forward by Republicans would require, among other things, that ballot initiatives pay petitioners by wage or hour, not by signatures gathered; include the name of the initiative's sponsor on the ballot; disclose the percent of money raised by sources in-state and allow for interested parties to weigh in, and file a 50-word “position statement” either for or against the proposal to be posted on the Department of State’s website.

Lawmakers have steadily made it more difficult to amend Florida’s constitution in the past, limiting the amount of time a group has to collect signatures and raising the threshold for an amendment’s passage to its current 60 percent.

Without much power in Tallahassee over the last 20 years, progressive groups have been most successful pushing policies passed by voters who approved amendments.

Rep. Margaret Good, a Sarasota Democrat, said voters who care about topics like the environment, medical marijuana and Medicaid expansion turn to the ballot process to make change.

“Citizens have a real and effective voice in our government when it is clear that our legislature is not adequately addressing issues that are important to our citizens,” Good said. “This is, right now, the only answer that citizens have to this very, very broken process. Raising the bar is quashing the voice of the voters and the citizens of this state.”

The signature-focused bills would affect two major amendments that could appear on the 2020 ballot, one raising the minimum wage and the other allowing “energy choice,” advocates for those ideas say.

Alex Patton, chairman of a committee trying to get an energy-choice amendment initiative on the ballot, said that the bill makes it “obvious: that “the powers that be do not like citizens speaking up them.”

“In almost all cases, it’s impossible to get two-thirds of the state of Florida to agree on anything,” Patton said. “It’s going to kill ballot initiatives.”

August 30, 2018

Parkland activist David Hogg appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday to announce a partnership with dozens of mayors across the country to register young voters in high school and college ahead of the general elections in November.

Hogg, a crusader for stricter gun laws following the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was joined Thursday by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The alumnus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and educators died during the Valentine's Day shooting, said dozens of U.S. mayors — including a handful in South Florida — would pledge to make resources available for a community-wide voter registration to take place Sept. 25, which will coincide with the Sept. 25 National Voter Registration Day.

As part of the so-called Mayors for Our Lives effort, named after the March for Our Lives movement against gun violence, city leaders from Parkland to Los Angeles have agreed to dedicate resources to a community-wide voter registration day on high school and college campuses within their respective cities.

“It’s a push toward the general,” said Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky, who was recruited to join the effort. “The more people who are involved in the process, the better it is for democracy.”

In Florida, the final day to register to vote in the general election is Oct. 9.

During his TV spot, Hogg said young voters were critical to the victory of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in the Democratic primary for governor of Florida — and that poll numbers don’t take recently registered voters into account.

“We had a Florida team going...to every Congressional district, all 27, in Florida throughout the summer registering thousands of new voters,” Hogg said, referring to the March for Our Lives: Road to Change voter registration tour that launched over the summer. “Our team from March for Our Lives Orlando helped promote voter registration so much that it went up 90 percent. In Florida, youth registration is up 41 percent. Those people are not taken into account in polls.”

NextGen America, a political action committee formed by billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, said voter turnout in college-area precincts jumped during Tuesday's primary. In Alachua County, home to the University of Florida, turnout was up 10 percent, according to the PAC, which backed Gillum financially. Precincts in Tallahassee that skew younger saw five times more votes cast Tuesday compared to 2014's primary election.

Youth voter registration in Florida rose by 41 percent following the shooting in Parkland, according to an analysis by TargetSmart, a data firm that works on behalf of Democrats.

In Florida, the mayors of Parkland, North Miami, Pembroke Pines and Miami Gardens have pledged to help register young voters through the Mayors for Our Lives effort.

“What we’re doing with Mayors for Our Lives is we’re announcing a campaign that’s bipartisan, with Republicans and Democrats, to register a new generation of voters,” Hogg said.

Hunschofsky, who said her city saw a two-to-threefold increase in overall voter turnout compared to the last midterm primaries, said the city commission would present some of the members of March for Our Lives with a city proclamation designating Sept. 25 as National Voter Registration Day in Parkland.

She said the Broward County Supervisor of Elections would work with schools across the county to make resources available during the registration drive.

“As a mayor, I’m extremely proud of our students and I’m extremely proud of our city,” she said. “Civic engagement is a crucial part of our democracy.”

November 04, 2016

Individuals, corporations, advocacy groups and super-PACs from outside Florida are pumping money into the close Senate contest between incumbent Marco Rubio and challenger Patrick Murphy.

More than $48 million in independent expenditures, most of it from outside the Sunshine State, has been spent on the Rubio-Murphy race in which the Miami Republican has held about a 3 point lead in recent days, according to the polling average on realclearpolitics.com.

Only five other U.S. Senate campaigns -- in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio -- have received more money from outside their campaigns.

Every state except Nevada features incumbent GOP senators who, like Rubio, are trying to fend off Democratic challengers. Nevada's race is for an open Senate seat vacated by the retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

Those six races will likely decide whether the Republican Party retains the Senate majority it gained in the November 2014 elections.

In addition to money contributed by outside groups, Rubio's campaign had raised $12.48 million through Oct. 19 while Murphy's campaign had raised $13.72 million, for a total of $26.2 million, according to the Federal Election Commission.

That figure combined with the independent expenditures puts an overall price tag of almost $75 million on the Rubio-Murphy Senate race.

In Florida's Senate race, outside groups have made 14 TV, media and digital ad buys totaling at least $1 million, all but one of them targeting Murphy.

The biggest buy was made by the Senate Leadership Fund on Oct. 27 for $3.16 million.

Among all super PACs in the country, only the liberal Priorities USA Action and the conservative Right to Rise USA have spent more.

Other groups based outside Florida that have spent big against Murphy are the American Future Fund, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Republican Senate Committee and the National Rifle Association.

The only Florida-centric organization with significant expenditures opposing Murphy is the Florida First Project, a super PAC created in June on the day Rubio did an about-switch and announced he was running for Senate re-election after having declined during his earlier presidential bid.

So-called "super" political action committees are free to collect unlimited amounts of money as long as the donors' identities and the amounts of their contributions.

The flood of independent expenditures by super PACs has followed a landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling, in a case brought by the conservative watchdog group Citizens United, that described such spending as expressions of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

However, direct contributions to political campaigns remain limited by campaign-finance law.

October 20, 2016

A key LBGT organization in South Florida on Thursday endorsed Joe Garcia in his bid to win back from Rep. Carlos Curbelo the House seat that the Miami Republican wrested from him two years ago.

The Miami-based SAVE group, formed in 1993, said it was supporting the Miami Democrat because of his work advocating equality.

"During his term as congressman, Joe served South Florida's LGBTQ community admirably, garnering SAVE's Champion of Equality Award in 2013 for his sponsorship of the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act and his efforts to protect LBGT immigration rights," SAVE said in a statement.

Once in Congress, Garcia served as vice chairman of the LGBT Equality Caucus. He helped pass bipartisan legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, which extended protects against rape and domestic violence to members of the LBGT community.

"One of my guiding principles is that every person should be treated equally," Garcia said Thursday. "That's why I'm honored that SAVE would recognize my work in support of the LGBTQ community."

SAVE's endorsement of Garcia came six days after Log Cabin Republicans, an influential GOP gay-rights group, endorsed Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo of South Florida in their re-election races, along with five other incumbent lawmakers from across the country.

Hastings, a 12th-term congressman from Miramar, will be joined by Reps. Charlie Rangel and Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and by Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green of Texas in a swing through Broward County.

Almost 30 percent of Broward residents are black, forming one of the state's largest African-American voting blocs and a hub of a critical demographic group for Clinton to win the nation's biggest swing state in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

"With the rhetoric that we've heard from the Republican ticket, there can be little doubt how dangerous a Trump presidency would be for our country," Hastings told the Miami Herald. "We are here, first and foremost, to rally the African-American community in South Florida to elect Hillary Clinton as president and Patrick Murphy as our next United States senator."

Murphy, a Democratic congressman from Jupiter, is running against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Miami.

The congressional group's first stop was slated to be tonight at 7 p.m. to address a meeting of the Haitian American Democratic Club at Diecke Auditorium in Plantation.

Hastings and his Congressional Black Caucus colleagues had six events planned for Friday:

The advocacy group, which believes that equality for LBGT people is in the best traditions of the Republican Party, said the seven newly endorsed representatives "have been steadfast allies of LBGT freedom" in the House of Representatives.

"All of these common-sense conservatives have not only spoken out in support of equality, but also cast votes in the 114th Congress that confirm their commitment to the cause," Gregory T. Angelo, head of Log Cabin Republicans, said.

Ros-Lehtinen, running for her 15th term against Miami small business owner Scott Furhman, expressed gratitude for the endorsement.

"I will continue to promote inclusiveness and ensure the fair and equal treatment of all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender," she said.

Curbelo is running for his second House term against Joe Garcia, the former congressman he defeated two years ago.

"In Congress, I have been proud to stand up for equality," Curbelo said. "I am honored to have the support of Republicans who understand that equality can never be a partisan issue."

September 29, 2016

Lawmakers had to stay late to get it done, but House passage of $1.1 billion in Zika prevention and research funds after a more than seven-month delay finally sends the bill to President Barack Obama's desk.

Despite having originally sought $1.9 billion in emergency Zika aid in February, Obama was expected to sign the broader $1.1 trillion stopgap appropriations measure that included the revamped Zika in a bid to break the partisan impasse over the money to combat the virus.

Just before 10 p.m. Wednesday, the House voted 242-85 to pass the larger spending measure funding the federal government through Dec. 9. Seventy-five Republicans and 10 Democrats voted against it, none from Florida.

The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the spending packing with Zika funds by a 72-26 vote. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Orlando both voted for the measure.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was still not ready to forgive completely GOP lawmakers who'd targeted Planned Parenthood partner clinics in Puerto Rico and added extraneous provisions to the original Zika bill, moves that contributed to its delay.

"After more than 900 confirmed cases of the Zika virus in Florida, House Republicans finally allowed us to pass most of the emergency funding we need to curb this public health crisis," the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman said.

While she called the Wednesday-night vote "a welcome start for Florida's pregnant women, business owners and families affected by the Zika virus," Wasserman Schultz added: "It has come many months later than it should have."

"It has been clear over the past several months that the U.S. has needed additional resources to combat the Zika virus," Gurman said. "With the threat of the virus continuing to loom this funding will help protect more people -- particularly pregnant women and their children -- from the virus' lasting negative health effects."

Pregnant women are especially vulnerable to Zika because it can cause birth defects such as microcephaly, which causes abnormally small brains and heads in newborns.

A large chunk of the $1.1 billion for Zika would go to Florida, New York and Puerto Rico, which combined have far more infections of the virus than any other states or territories.

The National Institutes for Health would receive more than $160 million of the Zika funds to continue its recently launched first clinical trial for a vaccine and to conduct other research.

Florida had 921 Zika cases as of Wednesday, including 92 involving pregnant women. One-hundred fifteen of the state's infections were transmitted directly by mosquitos.

The virus is carried primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but it can also be transmitted through sexual intercourse with an infected partner.

"This is a tremendous victory for the South Florida delegation who has tirelessly worked together, from both sides of the aisle and both chambers, to raise the importance of this issue and help resolve it," he said.

In a floor speech late Wednesday, Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, also from Miami, acknowledged that "the process of getting this funding across the finish line has been frustrating at times and bogged down in unnecessary political gamesmanship."

Saying that Zika represented "an ongoing threat to the health of residents and to the economic vitality of businesses in South Florida," Curbelo praised final passage.

Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Palm Beach Democrat running for the Senate against incumbent Republican Marco Rubio, said the Zika funds "could not be more urgent as Florida quickly approaches 1,000 cases."

Republican Reps. David Jolly and Vern Buchanan, who had pushed their House Republican colleagues to approve Zika funding for months, also hailed the successful vote.

September 23, 2016

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Nicaraguan government traded bitter criticisms Friday over charges of intimidation and repression.

The exchange started with a statement by the Managua government opposing an effort in Congress led by Ros-Lehtinen to restrict its access to loans in what would be a form of economic sanctions.

Without citing the Miami Republican by name, Nicaragua accused her and other lawmakers of having "been involved in disinformation and intimidation campaigns in the media against Democratic, pluralistic and progressive processes in Latin America and the Caribbean."

The alleged interference in Latin America appeared to be a reference to lawmakers' past criticism of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.

Ros-Lehtinen has been especially critical of Cuba and its allies in Venezuela and Nicaragua, along with Sen. Marco Rubio, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and other Cuban-American members of Congress.

Ros-Lehtinen fired back at the Nicaraguan government's latest salvo.

"Ortega's baseless accusations are just his latest attempt to detract attention away from the human rights abuses and the acts of corruption and intimidation he has been perpetrating in Nicaragua, but nobody is fooled," she said.

While Ros-Lehtinen targeted Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, the statement criticizing her bill came from the government he heads, not from him personally, although he all but certainly approved it.

And although Ros-Lehtinen said Ortega had attacked her, the Nicaraguan government statement did not mention her or any other lawmaker by name.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure that would place U.S. limits on loans to the Ortega government unless it accepts international observers and other steps toward holding free elections.

Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Albio Sires, a Cuban-American Democrat from New Jersey, were lead sponsors of the legislation. The Senate has not pass a companion bill.

Ros-Lehtinen said her measure's main aim was to “stop Ortega from accessing international funds until he adopts reforms that promote democracy, strengthen the rule of law, respect human rights, and celebrate free, fair, and transparent elections supervised by electoral observers.”

WASHINGTON Senate Republican leaders revealed what they called a breakthrough in Zika funding Thursday under renewed pressure from Florida lawmakers and mayors to break a seven-month political impasse.

Democrats, however, said disputes over funding other urgent needs could still block any final deal, with the Zika money now part of a larger appropriations measure meant to fund the federal government through Dec. 9.

Just a few hours after Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine met with South Florida members of Congress and visited the White House to push for the stalled Zika money, the Senate Republicans disclosed the new Zika effort.